As we charge through the critical midpoint of Q1, I'm here to arm you with strategies for keeping your 2024 goals within reach. Ever felt the drift away from your objectives, especially post-holiday? I've been there, and I'm spilling the secrets to pulling yourself back with fear setting, a technique that doesn't just anticipate obstacles but steers you straight through them. This episode is your roadmap for rebooting discipline in your diet, fitness, and professional routine, all to ensure you're hitting your marks not just as an entrepreneur or therapist, but in any ambitious pursuit you're on.
Strap in for a candid look at setting robust Q1 goals, where we tackle the temptation to cling to those festive season comforts a bit too long. I'll guide you through a check-up on your physical and emotional wellbeing, integral for anyone looking to conquer their field. Plus, we're marking our calendars for key business deadlines like the 1099 forms due January 31st—no slipping under our watch! Join me, and let's reignite that initial spark that drove you into your business, power past self-sabotage, and keep the momentum of your dreams in full swing.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
As we charge through the critical midpoint of Q1, I'm here to arm you with strategies for keeping your 2024 goals within reach. Ever felt the drift away from your objectives, especially post-holiday? I've been there, and I'm spilling the secrets to pulling yourself back with fear setting, a technique that doesn't just anticipate obstacles but steers you straight through them. This episode is your roadmap for rebooting discipline in your diet, fitness, and professional routine, all to ensure you're hitting your marks not just as an entrepreneur or therapist, but in any ambitious pursuit you're on.
Strap in for a candid look at setting robust Q1 goals, where we tackle the temptation to cling to those festive season comforts a bit too long. I'll guide you through a check-up on your physical and emotional wellbeing, integral for anyone looking to conquer their field. Plus, we're marking our calendars for key business deadlines like the 1099 forms due January 31st—no slipping under our watch! Join me, and let's reignite that initial spark that drove you into your business, power past self-sabotage, and keep the momentum of your dreams in full swing.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Today let's talk about what might be getting you off track and I know all of us had huge, big plans for 2024, whether you did New Year's resolutions or you did what I told you guys about a couple of weeks ago fear setting right, seeing what could go wrong, what might go wrong, and then what could go wrong if you didn't do the thing, which I love fear setting. And there are some things I'm doing right now to get into the brain space of fear setting. I always do that this time of year when I'm thinking about what I'm going to be doing this summer, because that's always my adventure time. So I'm thinking, ok, that sounds super scary. What should I do to mitigate if something goes wrong? What will happen if I don't do it? So this is a great time of year to just start to reevaluate a little bit. Am I getting closer to my Q1 goals or am I so far off track that there's no way I'm going to be shooting for the stars and hit the moon, or whatever that silly saying is? Actually, it's a pretty good saying, because you got to at least shoot for something, whether you are in solo private practice or you're ready to go outside the therapy room and you're becoming a supervisor or you're thinking about adding blogging or podcasting or something else. You have to have something written down where you're seeing it every day and you're focusing on it to make sure you don't get off track, right? It's the same reason we have GPS. So, yeah, there are some things that can be getting you off track right about now. In February, q1, quarter one the first quarter goes from January 1st to the end of March, so we're about halfway through it. What could have or could be getting you off track?
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to go ahead and put just kind of the obvious aside. Obviously, if you've had a health scare or something's going on with a family member, that can be definitely a thing that would get your business off track, and you've got to take care of you. You've got to take care of your responsibilities first, of course. So what I'm talking about are the things that are fixable. All right, so hang with me, because I'm going to sound a little bit like your therapist today, so I'm going to put it on, but I will take it off eventually, right?
Speaker 1:So let's talk about three things, because I love the number three. So the first thing I want to talk about is. I call it the slow slide. So the slow slide can be talked about in relation to getting older. What I'm talking about today, though, is in relation to the holiday slow slide. So whatever holiday you celebrate, when it gets to be that time of year, we don't kind of Well, how should I put this? We relax a little bit when it comes to, let's say, how much we drink, when it comes to alcohol, or how much we sleep, or what kind of foods we eat, so what kind of foods we eat, and so it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:But if you're starting off in January and you're an entrepreneur, if you're listening to this, I'm talking to you because you're getting your practice together, you're getting your career going. You're thinking about how's this all going to work and grow with my family life and all of my responsibilities. I'm talking to you like you're an athlete and you're getting ready to perform, and you're getting ready to go to the big competition, whatever that is. No, it's not a competition. What I'm talking about those making sure you understand, mentally and physically, you have to be in a really kind of top notch place as you're building and creating.
Speaker 1:I've talked to you before about how, when anxiety goes up, cognition goes down. So when you're worrying about things and you're, on top of that, not eating the best or you're drinking a little bit too much, I mean I'm looking into a camera right now, so I'm looking at myself. I know that there. You know I love beer, so I was really, really after COVID. I made a huge effort to take beer out of the equation and felt really good, and so then I sort of was like, okay, well, you know, I can have a beer once in a while, totally fine.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden over the holidays it seems like we were doing something with somebody somewhere and visiting, and there was alcohol and there was this and I was like, oh my goodness, the alcohol. My weekend is creeping into my week. So one of the things I do is or I'm doing still in process is reeling back to alcohol only one or two nights a week. That's for me, that's not necessarily for anybody else in the world. Right? This is me talking to me. You look at you, at you know all the things that you do, perhaps during the holiday a little bit too much of, or you don't quite have you know the discipline for because who does during the holidays, right, unless it's a holiday about discipline, in which case the end of the holiday is whoosh. All right, I'm going to eat and drink and do, and right.
Speaker 1:So it could be one of the easiest things to get back into control, to get into that athlete, that performance mindset for your Q1 goals is to look at what you're putting into your body or exercising. I'm actually dressed in my t-shirt, I've got on my new tennis, I'm going out for my walk as soon as I get off of this, because my next client isn't until three o'clock. So I'm like, okay, it's a beautiful day, I can put on a jacket. I'm going to get my walk in, because when it hits five o'clock, y'all, I'm going to have every excuse in the book to put my butt in my big chair and eat my dinner. Yeah, that's right, I won't even sit at the table. That's me All right.
Speaker 1:Number two One of the things you can shore up right, think of like a wall and you're having to put a new brick in it or some mortar or something like that are your holiday boundaries. Now, during holidays, we're coordinating things right. We're getting people together, we're answering invitations, we're on freaking group texts. That may still be your life right now, like I have my phone open and it's looking at me so that I can see the time. But there's a little function on there that I learned how to use really, really well January 1st, because I saw this as a problem, do not disturb. Now I even figured out how to hack that you can put on the driving function and put a little personal message there Hi, I'm not focusing on you right now. I'm doing business. You can do old school and leave me a voicemail, because I'm one of the people on the planet who will actually check my voicemail, or you can wait until this little sign goes off and try to text me again. But that has been a game changer. In fact, it's one of the reasons that I wanted to even put this on your training, because if you're still working with holiday boundaries and you're still letting everybody in and on a group text with your kids and coworkers and neighbors to coordinate who's bringing what for the potluck that was a month ago that's something you can absolutely get yourself off of. You don't need to see the joke of the day, you don't need to see the funny TikTok. You need to do your work. You need to sit down and focus on your Q1 goals. If you've forgotten what those are, no worries. The training just got put into your Step it Up profile how to set marketing goals, how to set financial goals. Go back and listen to those. Number three is too pronged, so maybe three and four, but I'm going to stick to three.
Speaker 1:Seasonal Affective Disorder Sad, I don't even know if this made it into the DSM, whatever we're in now, but it's a thing, it's real. Less sunlight, it can affect your body, it can affect your soul. As far as I'm concerned, I grew up in Michigan. I grew up where it was cloudy, cloudy, cloudy. We didn't know what that was 50 years ago. So here I am. I was born in Texas. I got here as fast as I can.
Speaker 1:But one thing we can do is two things. Number one go to the doctor. If you haven't had a physical checkup in a while, go to the doctor. You may have hormonal changes happening. You may need more vitamin D, you may have thyroid issues. You may have all kinds of things going on that are literally sabotaging your efforts to get more sleep, to eat better, to exercise more. So before you beat yourself up listening to this podcast like, oh my gosh, I can't do these things. Y'all think like a therapist for a minute. What's the first thing? Well, I know the first thing. I tell my clients or I ask them when was your last physical, when was your last blood draw? Like? I get very specific. I want to know when their last blood draw was. I know paramediposal, now menopausal me, now postmenopausal me my goodness, I was changing more than a 10 year old, right. It's just in the wrong direction. So, getting blood tested, endocrine levels checked, thyroid, all of the things, go, get that checked if you're just not feeling like yourself.
Speaker 1:Another thing to check this isn't the happiest time of year for a lot of us. A lot of us have holiday memories that really weren't the greatest. In fact, we're trying our best, like that duck treading water. You know, in the top they look super calm and underneath they're just ooh, they're going at it right. We're trying our best to make things all magical and shit and inside we're really suffering because we're trying to get over this feeling, this really really dark feeling that this time of year brings. So if you are from a space where there's trauma in your past and the trauma was around the holiday season, it's not just going to go away like a light switch because it's January 1st, happy New Year. You're not so happy. This may be the time of year you want to get into your own therapy and start to understand that anniversary effect, the anniversary effect of your trauma, that heaviness that you feel, and you just keep taking your vitamin D and you're like, why am I not feeling better? Well, because there's some trauma that is unresolved and recognized. Who knows right? But that's not your fault. What's happening is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
Speaker 1:So, as you're looking at your Q1 goals and you're looking at, okay, I've got to get money goals in shape, I've got to get these marketing goals down. I've got to, I've got to, I've got to, and you just feel that weight. Look at these three things, remember number one the slow slide over the holidays when it comes to food and alcohol. Number two, the boundaries that we let down so we could communicate effectively. But we need to raise that back up, right, we need to get those walls back in place. And then, finally, number three our physical and emotional health. Right, get that checked so you can get back on track. We've got to be able to course correct. Steer the ship. Make sure that you're on track for Q1 so that Q2, right, we're getting ready for tax season.
Speaker 1:If you own a business with 1099 contractors January 31st right, we sent out the first copies of the 1099s right? You have to keep those dates. You have to keep running your business. Why? Because you're awesome, because you got into this business, because you had a fabulous dream and a great story and the reason you wanted to help your community was incredible and, as a result, your community loves you. They want more of you and you're growing and you have so much in front of you. You've got big dreams, you've got big plans. Don't let beating yourself up over things you can't help and the things you can help sabotage your success.